We're reaching the halfway point of 100 Favorite Dishes countdown! Every day until the publication of our fantabulous Best Of Issue, we'll list our favorite meals this year in descending order. Enjoy, pass it on, and tune in daily!

If you can't find something you like on the menu at Phoenix Food Boutique, then you must not like Asian food. The restaurant embraces no regional bias. There's teriyaki sauce on the prime rib. The stir-fried water spinach stinks from the inimitable smelly-feet aroma of Malaysian belacan. And you always have the option of creating your own dish by picking a protein and sauce from a list of ten that includes the opportunity to make a kung-pao out of anything.

And everyone, and I mean everyone who isn't a vegetarian, will love the pan-fried crispy noodles with shredded pork. This dish consisting of a nest of deep fried noodles as thin as angel air is as perfect and as simple as it gets. It's smothered in a silken gravy with bean sprouts and velvety strips of pork. When you eat it, you realize its greatness lies in the tenuous existence of the noodle's crispness beneath all that sauce--a texture that feels as though a million tiny twigs simultaneously snapping in half in your mouth.

Edwin Goei was born on the island of Java, grew up in La Habra, studied in Irvine, and eats everywhere. Before becoming an award-winning restaurant critic for OC Weekly in 2007, he went by the alias "elmomonster" on his blog Monster Munching, in which he once wrote a whole review in haiku.